As baseball pushed itself right to the brink this week, dangling its feet over the side of its ninth work stoppage in the last 30 years, it received a strange reaction in Boston.

In an otherwise baseball crazed-city -- the Red Sox played in front of their 57th sellout of the season and 35th in succession Wednesday night -- there was nevertheless the feeling that fans weren't terribly interested in pulling it back from the precipice.

	Nomar Garciaparra has hit only .200 with no home runs and two RBI over his last seven games.

Blame it on the Yankees -- everyone else does -- but things turned so sour at times that it seemed for a time that the looming work stoppage might actually be welcomed.

Indifference might have been expected in Kansas City and Montreal and other bergs, but baseball could always count on Boston. That is, until the citizenry turned on its team, miffed at, in no particular order, its club's alarming second-half slide, its inability to remain focused in the face of the strike and a sweep at the hands of the dreaded Yankees.

In the late innings of the Red Sox' 7-0 loss Wednesday -- hard on the heels of a 6-0 whitewash the night before and the third shutout at home in the the span of five days -- fans took the cruelest cuts of all. In pockets of Fenway Park, in between the obligatory shouts of "Yankees Suck!'' came a more damning chant: "Let's Go Pats! Let's Go Pats!''

It was the sound of a region giving up on baseball. For the time being, anyway.

It capped an extraordinary week for the Red Sox, who returned home to Fenway a week ago with full knowledge they were embarking on their most critical homestand of the season. Having already slipped behind the Yankees in the AL East, they still had the wild card on which to focus.

A three-game set with Texas was to be followed by a four-game showdown with the Anaheim Angels and a two-game match with the Yankees. When the Sox dropped their eighth consecutive series opener to Texas, momentum was nowhere to be found. In the final game of the Texas series, shortstop Nomar Garciaparra, hardly the demonstrative type, uncharacteristically barked at teammates in the dugout after the fifth inning, sparking a rare late-inning rally.

When Garciaparra's two-run, bases-loaded single propelled them to a 5-3 win over Texas on Aug. 22, it marked the first time in almost seven weeks that the Sox had won a game in their final at-bat.

Building on that rare bit of momentum, the Sox took the opener of their big series with the upstart Angels, fashioning a three-game winning streak for the first time since mid-July. But just as quickly, the spark was gone. The Angels shut them out last Saturday, then cruelly unleashed their game of little ball to score five runs in the ninth -- launched by a suicide squeeze authored by former Red Sox farmhand David Eckstein.

Manager Grady Little created a stir after the game when he was asked if he was satisfied with his team's focus.

"Not necessarily,'' said Little. "I think that our players, like everyone all around baseball, are probably a little split on their day-to-day play right now. There's a lot looming in the next few days and our players are no different.''

Of course, the distractions didn't seem to be slowing, say, the Oakland A's, who merely ripped off 15 straight wins while the Red Sox were fighting off labor ennui. Still, Little seemed to have a point: it was difficult to watch them slog through this homestand and see something other than a team which could use an infusion of energy and life.

In what may have been the surest sign that the apocalypse was upon the Sox: they're 1-4 in their last five games started by Derek Lowe and co-ace Pedro Martinez. For a team which managed to cling to contention on the coattails of their twin 17-game winners, that served as an ominous reminder that there are no more sure things.

Lowe compounded the misery when he ducked reporters after his last start on Sunday, only to admit a day later that, yes, he too, was guilty of lost focus thanks to the strike.

"Where's the focus? Where's the fire?'' wondered one Red Sox executive.

It was a logical question to ask.

For the past week, first baseman Tony Clark, who doubles as the American League player representative, patiently answered questions on the status of the talks. Clark is an articulate spokesman for the Players Association, and his ready availability and gentle way have helped camoflauge his miserable season at the plate.

But when Red Sox CEO Larry Lucchino was asked on a Boston radio station last week whether Clark's union duties were detracting him from the real task at hand, Lucchino tellingly responded: "No comment.''

On Wednesday, even as the team prepared for its last home game of the season against the Yankees, some players discreetly packed belongings and a couple made plans to ship their cars home.

Johnny Damon said he had packed two suitcases for Friday -- summer clothes for a return to his home in Florida and warmer clothes for a flight to Cleveland and the continuation of the season.

It was a surreal sight, all right, a team in transition, the way you might expect in the final days of spring training as teams ready for the end of one portion of the baseball calendar and the start of another.

Coming as it did at the end of a disappointing homestand, the Red Sox knew they would be leaving town. What they didn't know was whether they were leaving for a week or for the winter, and strangely, not a lot of people seemed to care.

Sean McAdam of the Providence Journal covers baseball for ESPN.com.